Jackpot
by chezchuckles
Summary: An insert between 4x05 'Eye of the Beholder' and 4x06 'Demons' - Serena Kaye and the haunted mansion - in which we see the Johanna Beckett Benefit. A prompt idea from Jeff. Happy Birthday, Jeff!


**Jackpot**

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><p><strong>AN**: This story takes place between 4x05 'Eye of the Beholder' and 4x06 'Demons' - Serena Kaye and the haunted mansion. Beckett's marked change in demeanor towards Castle - her unusually open warmth when he's at her front door begging to go ghost-hunting - makes me wonder what happened off-screen. With Serena, she's ungracefully bowing out, 'giving him up' to Serena, but while in the haunted house, she's eyeing him with fond familiarity, supremely confident again.

When Jeff suggested this premise, I knew it would fit perfectly between these two episodes. It answers a lot.

**Happy Birthday, Jeff!**

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><p><strong>-x-<strong>

Beckett stands in front of the bathroom mirror, inspecting herself, listening to the low murmur of voices in her living room. Her father showed up to escort her, but then Castle did as well, along with his car service, and the way Jim heartily invited him inside makes her think they've colluded.

Well, some collusion is a relief, if she's honest. She still can't lift both arms over her head and keep them there, and after long days at the precinct, her ribs ache like she's been shot.

Oh, wait. She was.

Nearly six months ago. It should be better than this; she really thinks it ought to be over, all the pain and therapy and issues. She shouldn't have to wonder if, come midnight, she'll turn into a pumpkin.

Kate turns her back to the mirror and glances over her shoulder at her reflection. The long gold dress has a dark, muted cast to its metallic shimmer, like dirty coins, and it makes her feel dangerous, even sensual with all this clinging silk.

The dress is backless, _to make up for missing the girls_, Lanie said when she'd made her try it on. Kate wishes she hadn't agreed to it, all that skin, because the high rise of the bodice in a gold clasp around her neck isn't fooling anyone.

She looks, she realizes too late, like slave Princess Leia. Except this isn't two-piece or low-cut in the front, just the _back_, where - oh, hell, she's just now thought of it - where lately Castle puts his hand to usher her through a door.

His bare hand to her bare skin, and Lanie _so _did this on purpose.

But she's got nothing else and she's already knotted up and stiff with the effort of staving off pain, and her father and Castle are in her living room, no doubt talking about her, comparing notes on recovery and day-to-day endurance.

Nothing for it.

Time to face the music.

**-x-**

She finds them again at the elaborate tables near the back of the atrium, heads bent together, a look on her father's face that spells grief and worry both. When they see her, they separate like caught school children, Castle with an entirely too smooth smile that she's never actually seen him pull off before.

He's learned all too well how to hide from her these days.

She puts her hands to the back of the chair before her, leaning. "Well?"

"Just talking about the benefit," her father says. He doesn't try the smile, but he comes to her side and kisses her cheek. "Raising a lot of money here, sweetheart. It's good work."

"Yeah, it is," she admits, turning her eyes to Castle. He stands in his tuxedo, darkly formal, the crisp white shirt, the onyx cufflinks. His eyes look so blue against the black. She runs her fingers over the cloth back of the chair, regarding him seriously. "Thank you."

"Please don't," he scrapes out, a strain around his mouth that hits her like a fist. She blinks, drops her eyes from his.

She's been doing her best to mingle, really work the room - for her mother's sake - and so has Castle, and her father, even the boys. Lanie is here and presses champagne or hors d'oeuvres into her hands to keep her going. She hasn't seen Castle much at all, not since their drive here in the car. He's been making himself scarce lately.

Her father pats her arm, nods to Castle. "Rick, thank you - for everything. It's turned into a grand event." He moves away, leaving her shipwrecked at the table with her partner. The man who is hosting this whole thing, who has stepped up to the microphone at the head table a hundred times tonight, cajoling and exhorting his fellow New Yorkers to bid on auction items, or just keeping the festive mood going, reminding them of why they're here.

He did all this. "Castle. Really. Thank you."

He stays silent for a moment, but then he nods. Like it takes effort to accept anything from her.

There is still the distance of the entire eight-place table between them.

"It's beautiful in here," she adds lamely. Tonight the Hayden Planetarium presents a massive glass cube supported by steel beams that are strung with tiny blue lights like inverse stars. It takes her breath away to look out over the atrium, the planets in their positions as people orbit below, the massive sun in the center of the room lit up in that same unearthly blue. From here, she can see her amazing city lining the sky.

He deserves to know that she more than just appreciates this.

"The coordinator," he starts suddenly. "Did you meet him? He did so much of the work, really. He just gave me a range of choices and pulled it all together. Amazing work. Donovan Jones - let me introduce you to him."

Castle is reaching for her, to usher her away from this semi-private corner of the room, trying to herd her back towards the safety found in numbers around the far side of the massive model sun. And she's fine taking his lead tonight, really, she'd rather not stop to think about everything they don't say. But when Castle's hand comes to her back to guide her away, they both falter at the contact.

Skin on skin, the cool of hers meeting the white-hot of his, and neither of them look at each other for a second.

She can feel every whorl of his fingertips, feel the slight pressure exhorting her forward, but she doesn't - can't - step away from him.

"Kate," he says, a plea that has her closing her eyes.

His hand lingers and then curls up into a fist, and somehow that's worse, his knuckles pressed to her bare spine.

"Right," she says, straightening up, desperate to get them back on solid ground. "Introduce me to the details man. Since I'm already quite familiar with the mastermind. As I'm sure you are."

Castle grins back at her, wriggling his eyebrows, and though his hand remains - it would be calling attention to the _everything_ of it if he moved away now - it's like they've somehow managed a hasty but tasteful retreat.

"Donovan! May I present Detective Beckett?"

And just like that it's gone, all of it, the hesitation and the hurt and the urge all. Swept away so cleanly that Kate can forget it was even there. What bullet? What confession in the grass?

She's just a woman in a formal gold silk dress, smiling at a handsome kid in tails and a paisley cummerbund who has a Southern accent and the whitest teeth.

Though she's standing, maybe, a little too close to Castle than she ought to.

She can't seem to help it.

**-x-**

Beckett takes a shallow breath, fingertips pushed up against the incision scar in her side. Her ribs ache, but she wouldn't trade this night for the world. The city outside, familiar and tall, the universe inside.

"Detective," his voice slides into her reverie. "There you are. Looking all over for you."

His smile is deep and filled with the kind of meaning she's finding it harder and harder to ignore these days. Words. She's always getting hooked by words. Lines in a movie (_my name is Inigo Montoya), _words inscribed in the front of a book (_Jules, I've loved you from afar), _or the bleak ache of a poem (_the distance spills itself...)_

His words always have, except now they're the words he no longer says that get her. _I love you, Kate._

"Kate?"

She startles at his touch, glances over to find him resting against the railing of the stairs, no longer watching the main floor but studying her, alone on the viewing deck.

"Beckett. You okay?"

"The scar - pulls a little," she says, her usual excuse. But it is pulling a little, and she's been in these heels all night. She lifts a foot from under her gold dress, rotates her ankle to show the spike of her heel. "And the shoes don't help."

"Come sit with me?" That he asks at all makes her wish he would be his usual self, blundering in without paying any heed, but he's not that man anymore.

Maybe he never was.

He's offering his arm to her, and she slips her hand in the crook of his elbow, surprised at how warm it is through the tuxedo jacket and dress shirt. She finds herself leaning into him even as his other hand comes up and wraps around her fingers, patting.

He's been so careful lately about touching - avoiding contact with her, handing off her coffee cup so that their fingers never brush, stepping back from the obvious opportunities for a hug. A high-five once after a good solve, a squeeze of her fingers when it proved to be absolutely necessary.

She's afraid he's doing it for himself, not her - not because he's respecting her boundaries; when has he ever? - but to protect himself. To protect what's left after what she did to him.

He has to be still so very upset with her because of this summer. The boys have told her a few stories, about how he used to bring his phone with him to the precinct while they tried to find the sniper, how his phone would sit right by his hand with his eyes darting towards it every thirty seconds. How, even after _weeks_ of her silence, he still kept his phone front and center, waiting for a call he was certain would come.

But it didn't come. And Gates took over the 12th and kicked him out and he didn't fight it.

Sometimes she can see it coming up in his eyes like mud stirred in a normally clear river, how angry he's been, how it won't be soothed, how he can't stand to even look at her or it might suffocate him.

Just when she starts to despair, he does something like this. Tonight.

Castle leads her to the staircase and pauses, and they look out over the Johanna Beckett Memorial Fund and Silent Auction. The floor of the planetarium is mobbed with New York City's elite, as well as its do-gooders and and ACLU members, and even a handful of plain old cops. All moving under the tiny blue lights strung through a clear glass cube, blue touches against a black night outside.

Her mom could never have imagined this. Her mother was a down-in-the-trenches kind of woman, and she wouldn't have been able to lift her head above the morass to see the possibilities of something like this, the amazing strides forward that can be had in a glitzy party with beautiful blue lights.

Beckett wouldn't have either. It's Castle who has done all this, Castle who found a way to build something positive in her mother's name.

Kate can't even do that. All she's got is a bullet wound in the chest and a father who looks at her as if she's next and he's trying to figure out how he'll survive it.

But Castle keeps going. He survived it, even this past summer when his phone never rang. He did all this because he made her a promise to help, and he didn't stop just because she did. He kept going. He pushed forward even without her.

The blue lights glow. It's beautiful up here, and she can forget how much her incision hurts, how the scar between her breasts mars her skin. "How did you ever pull this off?" she murmurs.

"I had all summer."

She tenses, and he sighs, fingers squeezing over hers.

"Not what I meant, Beckett. I had some free time. I was looking into a few things, and this was a good way to ask questions."

Ask... questions? About her mother. For this benefit going on below them, all the beautiful people beneath the solar system on display in the atrium. She's got the universe at her feet, laid out for her by Rick Castle himself, and yet she can't fathom why he's needed to ask questions.

"Castle?"

"Maybe we shouldn't get into this here."

She goes still, waiting, listening, her whole being oriented to his next breath and whatever sound might come on it. But he doesn't speak so she has to. "Get into what?"

"Kate, not tonight," he says softly. His fingers leave hers but he doesn't withdraw his arm. "Are you ready to descend? We have a few more items on the agenda and I'm the host."

She wants to say, _go on without me_, but she's so tired of that. Everyone has gone on without her; she's stuck back here, trying to figure things out, trying to work past the mess she's made of things, and sometimes she's afraid she never will.

But her body is weary, and her soul has followed. A long week with a snobbish private insurance investigator whom Castle played tonsil hockey with, smudging bright red lipstick over a mouth that Kate used to imagine-

No. Not tonight, not here. Don't ruin this beautiful night.

After that successful case resolution, she's gained another fresh body but there's still no close on her horizon, and Kate has her phone in her clutch in case she gets a text from forensics. And of course, when Serena Kaye was waiting in the wings, Beckett used her nights alone pushing it too far with the physical therapy home exercises. So she's had this coming, this complete breakdown of her physical stamina.

The spectacle of the stairs is daunting. The room below them is even more so, the people strangers from Castle's world, and normally she would have the energy and confidence to handle it without batting an eye.

Not any more tonight. She's not sure she can do it. Her mother's case is closed for now and cold, so cold it aches, and there's a sniper gunning for her and she can't even begin to understand why he just hasn't killed her already.

Why hasn't he killed her already?

She feels the sword hanging over her neck and tonight she can't put on the brave face. She just can't.

"Kate?"

She doesn't even have to look up to see him, not in shoes this tall, such a mistake to wear; she simply turns her head and there he is. Eye to eye and his tender concern fills her lungs like a deep breath.

"I'm ready," she lies, and shifts towards the stairs.

She knows that Castle, at her side, won't let her fall.

Whatever else she's done, he's her partner still.

**-x-**

"Do you want to sit?" he murmurs softly.

"No. I'm fi-" Kate swallows it back, taking her cue by the look on his face: swamping despair. "I'm making it," she answers more honestly. "I can stand for another - thirty minutes at least."

Every trace of that grief she glimpsed is completely gone when he turns to her. Smile in his eyes if not on his face. How did he get so good at hiding himself from her?

Maybe he always has.

There's a depressing thought. Another for the night. She'll add it to the list of ways she's failed Rick Castle, things to make up to him when she can actually do some making up. _Making out._ She really shouldn't have these thoughts, not when his fingers are trailing at her elbow as if she needs help standing.

He grumbles something like approval. "Well, I have one last round to make, and then the auction closes and we'll announce winners. Can you stand up there with us on the dais?"

She eyes the long, low expanse with its sophisticated decoration, the massive bouquet of orchids on their graceful stems, the complete lack of chairs. "I'll make it."

He's studying her, but when she catches him at it, his eyes smoothly avert. She doesn't know why she's noticing all this tonight, and why not some other night, but a combination of his turning down Serena Kaye and his promise-keeping fund raiser, and she's clueing in to the biggest mystery of her life.

Why does Castle love her at all?

Kate lets out a long breath, her severe lack catching up to her at long last, but Castle's fingers tighten on her elbow like he's afraid she's going to collapse.

She won't collapse. She can withstand even this great injustice she's done to him, the responsibility of his heart.

Can't she? She's better than the woman who woke in ICU with a tube down her throat and neat stitches hiding the hole in her chest. She's better than the _I'll call you_ who never did.

She can be more than that.

"If you'll find me a chair, Castle, I think that might be a good idea."

His face brightens. "Of course. Discretely. I'll put two chairs up there and have Jim sit with you. How about that?"

She meant only to have the chair for just in case - she's not an invalid; she works all day long. And even as those indignancies rise up in her, she bites them back.

She can give him this.

"That sounds perfect."

His smile is so wide, so deep, that it transforms his whole face. All beaming, pleased gratefulness at having something to do for her.

So much in fact, that he leans in swiftly and kisses her cheek. "Be right back."

And then he deserts her.

But the ghost of his lips breathe across her skin, just below her eye, and she's afraid it will never not haunt her.

**-x-**

"Good night, Katie," her father says, hanging on the open car door to bend down and awkwardly hug her. He's not had the best time tonight, she knows, but he's still making it. They both are. "Get some rest, sweetheart."

"I will," she promises, nodding. If even her father is asking her to rest tonight, she knows it must be showing on her face. At least she's ensconced in the car's back seat, at least she doesn't have to stand up any more.

The scar - it's not supposed to hurt like this, she thinks. She's pressing her fingers into her side where the surgeon made the emergency incision, her arm is wrapped around her body as if it can bulwark her ribs; she's being fairly obvious about it.

Her father straightens up, his face masked in his usual reservation. She doesn't know how he's managed hearing about her mother all night, the beautiful things her former co-workers said, the rehabbed inmates she represented who came forward to offer their own testimonies. The silent auction raised nearly a million dollars alone - all of that money going to a fund for indigent defense and New York Supreme Court appeals.

Looks like her dad is still processing. He gives her a subdued wave and moves to shut the door.

"Wait," she hears. "Wait, I'll ride with you."

Her father arrests his movement, glances back over his shoulder at the form coming down the steps towards the drive. Castle is all grins and breathlessness as he hurries up to them.

She can't exactly say no.

He gives her father a firm handshake and a nod of his head at something Jim says, even a chuckle and pound on the back before he slides onto the seat with her. He closes the door himself and she's trapped inside with him, intimate quarters.

"I'll see you home," he says quietly. His body is like electricity beside her, sparking and heat-giving and dangerous. His thigh presses against hers, her knee caught by his leg. He leans forward and pats the driver's shoulder. "Thanks, Eric. Detective Beckett first."

"Of course, Mr Castle."

Castle settles against the seat with her, their arms touching, bodies closer than they ought to be. She can't help giving herself a moment to release her taut muscles and sink, heavily, against him. Just that second, she only wants one selfish moment to revel in the warmth of him, the strength of him, how he holds her up so that she doesn't hurt quite so much.

But of course he notices. "You've got to be in some pain, if you're leaning on me, Beckett."

She stiffens and straightens up, and he doesn't move to reassure her. Kate swallows and tries to angle her shoulders back against the seat, put some distance between them so she can't be tempted, but his hand comes down over her knee.

She stops so abruptly, stunned by the mixed signals. It's just that her whole night has been mixed signals, and if he's angry with her, if he can't get past this summer, then he should just... say so.

What a hypocrite she is. What a damn hypocrite. They are hiding, both of them, and if it's a change in m.o. on his part, she can't exactly demand that he stop. Even though she misses the man who pulled her pigtails.

"You need some pain reliever, we can stop and get something. Kate?" Before she can say anything, he's tilting forward and hanging between the front seats. "Eric, find us a convenience - oh, hey, that gas station will work. I'm going to get Detective Beckett some Tylenol or - something. Hey, Beckett-" He sinks back beside her. "Would IcyHot do it? That muscle cream?"

She winces. "No, tried that. Kinda makes it worse. Advil, actually, Castle, if you don't-"

"I don't mind," he chirps, already moving to get out of the car. They've stopped at a gas station only a few blocks from the planetarium, and he's not nearly as conspicuous in his tuxedo as she might have thought. He's comfortable every place he goes, tux or no.

The Advil won't do a thing, not this far gone, but he looked jumpy. Like he suddenly didn't want to be in the backseat with her. Even though he was the one who called on her to wait up for him.

She just doesn't know what it means. And she's so tired of trying to figure it out.

Castle disappears inside the gas station without even a backward glance.

**-x-**

She has her head titled back against the seat when the door opens again, and she doesn't bother to open her eyes. Castle sighs as he slides in beside her, and she knows she has to sit up again, deal with this, her life, but the way this feels is so nice right now.

Checking out. She has checked out. She can't even be bothered to care.

"I've got Advil, Kate. It will help."

The rough burr of his voice in the darkness rasps over her like sandpaper, sending goose bumps up her arms and a delicious chill across her collarbones. She lifts her head almost instinctively, hardly realizing it, and opens her eyes to him.

He isn't smiling. But he holds out the little bag. "Advil, water bottle. Something for tonight."

Her mind just - goes blank.

Not true. Actually, her mind _leaps_ to conclusions about tonight, about what he might have bought inside a convenience store for them for tonight-

But she shuts it down. She reaches for the plastic bag, hearing it crinkle in the quiet. Castle leans forward and says something to Eric, and the car starts up again, giving them both a moment.

Did he read it on her face? What she thought he was saying. Planning for tonight.

"Thank you," she says then, congratulating herself on the steadiness of her voice. She's already pulled out the travel pack of advil, a packet really, and the water comes sliding like a fish into her lap, staining her silk dress with its wetness.

Castle makes a noise of distress, grabs for the bottle. His fingers slide against the silk, against her skin, against the sensitive inside of her thighs, and she goes very very still.

Castle is rescuing her dress, the bottle held aloft now, his other hand pressed palm-hot to her thigh as if to mop up the damp imprint. She's finding it takes all of her concentration - the heat of his hand through silk - as if she has to will her body to maintain its own borders, keep the cell walls in place so she doesn't just dissolve.

"Here," he says. He's managed to twist the cap off the water bottle and he hands it over. For lack of anything better, she pulls the receipt out of the plastic bag, thinking how much to reimburse him. Pay him back for... all of it.

She got her fingers around the paper, but it comes out with a hard little card, red and shiny. "A lottery ticket?" she laughs, bewildered more by the way his hand was pressed to her thigh for that interminable moment, still trying to breathe around the lingering feel of him.

"There was a five dollar limit for card purchases," he says.

"Oh, I owe you-"

"I _know_ you're not carrying cash in that tiny little cutch, Beckett." He fishes it off the floor - when did that happen? - and drops it in her lap, covering the faint damp spot and making the plastic bag crinkle.

"How do you know what I've got in my clutch?"

Castle - in some fit of daring she never saw coming - reaches out and fondles the clutch. "Is that your gun, Detective, or are you just happy to see me?"

There's a moment where it's just his leer and her shocked open mouth, the connection between them so vital and pulsing she can't breathe, and then they're both cracking up, laughter spilling through the backseat like water, filling her up, making her float, making it easy.

When she's wiped her eyes with her thumbs and hopefully not smeared too much mascara, when the car has braked to a stop in a crush of traffic, Kate lets out a final chuckling breath and flips the card over in her hand.

Ruby 2s. Red and shining scratch-off. She holds it out to him. "Here's your lottery ticket, Castle."

"Naw, it's yours. All for you. Take your advil, Beckett."

She forgot in all that laughter. Forgot even a hint of how the scar stretches and pulls, like the surgeon stitched her skin to her insides, the two stuck together. Side-splitting laughter, isn't that what it's called? Except her side isn't split.

Amazing.

But Kate dutifully downs four of the pills, enough to match her prescription strength ones at home, and swallows a few mouthfuls of water, aware now of the way the damp silk clings to her thigh.

She caps the bottle, leaves it in the door's cupholder, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand as Castle keeps his head turned, his eyes on the night outside the window.

Their bodies aren't even close any more, his hand on the seat between them, and she settles back, finds her fingers tracing the edge of the lottery scratch-off just so she can feel the silk of her dress below that.

It might be pathetic, but it's all she's got right now. The ghosting of heat on her thigh where his hand fumbled for a water bottle and then thoughtlessly pressed, absorbing the damp spot to his skin, to hers.

Kate tilts her head back on the seat again, closes her eyes to the night. She rubs the rough spots on the card, over and over just to keep from reaching her hand out and sliding it in his. It's not fair to him, and if he's angry about this summer still, then leading him on isn't going to help, promising more than she can deliver. She's not a tease; she has to keep her hands in her own lap.

It aches. Clear to her heart.

Her nail catches the edge of a disc on the card, one of the rubies for scratching, and she digs at it, her head coming up to look. She's glad she took the Advil now, because the tug on her side is becoming more pronounced and her exhaustion is creeping in between her bones. The card is gritty where she's rubbed, unwittingly scratched off the circles-

"Hey, you've won," he murmurs at her ear. His body shifts close, closer, his warmth pressing at her side. He reaches for the card and plucks it from her fingers "Beckett, hot damn, you won."

"What?" she mumbles, her belly tensing with the idea of his hand so close. Fluttering for it.

"You won. Doubled - see the 2? You won double the prize."

"I don't know what-"

"Holy shit. It's twenty thousand dollars."

Her mouth drops open.

He's grinning like crazy. "Jackpot, Kate. You've got the magic touch."

"What?" she rasps, reaching for the card. _If anyone's magic..._ She doesn't know why, but she grabs his wrist instead of the scratch-off, pulling the card towards her, and the sheer strength and size of his hand sends her body into free fall.

"We raised twice the amount of money tonight than the auction house expected, and now you've scratched off twenty thousand. You've got the touch, Beckett."

She has to let go of his hand. He's grinning over a lottery ticket, not even looking at her and she absolutely has to let go. She's going to do something very bad if she doesn't let go of him.

"It's yours," she gets out, shaking her head. "It's your scratch-off. You bought it."

"No, got that for you. Besides, you played it - you did the work. Your reward, Beckett."

"No, I-"

"All yours, Kate."

She's dizzy with how he switches back and forth, Beckett and Kate, Kate and Beckett. She doesn't _know_ what he's trying to say anymore. It's too confusing.

"Take it," he urges. Hesitancy glides over his eyes. "I know you could use it."

She stares at him, everything clicking into place a second before it next comes out of his mouth.

"I tried to ask your dad. Actually, when you found us by the tables. I wanted to put some of tonight's money towards your... bills. I know it's expensive, even with insurance; I know you've-"

"No," she says, shaking her head at him, forcing herself _not_ to close her eyes to shut it out. "No, that's not right. It's not for me. It's for my mom."

"Your dad said that too," he admits softly. "But Kate, if you need-"

"No."

He frowns, only a brief flicker of it in the look, but she sees how she's done it again. Pushed him away, held him at a distance, and if she's ready to weep with _his_ mixed signals, God, hers must be killing him.

She tries again. "No, Castle, I more than appreciate the offer. But it's not - it's just life. This is what - I'll deal. I am dealing."

"You've been dealt-"

"It's okay," she says, winces as she hears it. "No, it's not okay, but I'm working through it. I'm - it helps to have people in my life who care - care about it. Enough to offer me obscene amounts of money." She tries to smile at him.

"It's not that obscene." He gives a rare, strained smile back. "At least take the scratch-off. Universe is trying to repay some of its debt."

Castle presses the card down into her leg, her thigh, the exact spot where the water bottle rolled and he fumbled, but this time it's just his finger and thumb and the card, and she stares down at it.

Twenty thousand dollars from a stupid cash register add-on so that he could use his credit card. Because she had no room in her clutch for her wallet, because when she leaves the house without her gun she feels a panic attack crowding in on her.

Yeah, maybe the universe does owe her, but that's not what tonight is about.

"I can't take it," she says, lifting her head to him. His face falls just a little, enough to let her know he's put some kind of symbolism on the whole thing and she can't figure out what. Accepting his gesture equals...?

"Beckett," he sighs, starting to object.

She lays her hand over the card. "But I'll donate it to a certain fund I know about," she says softly, lifting the corner of her mouth in a smile. "It's going to do some really good work. My mother would be honored."

His eyes melt. There's no other word for it. He's in love with her. It's spilling right out of him and all over her and she's going to drown in it.

He reaches out and lays his hand over hers, fingers curling around her thumb and touching the lottery scratch-off. He squeezes once, but he doesn't let go.

Their hands stay that way, on the space between the seats, through the drive home.

**-x-**

It's too quiet and the stairs in her building leave her winded, which makes conversation awkward. She can't wait to get out of these shoes, and she turns back to him, trying to find a way to end their night.

"This is really yours," she says at her door, holding the scratch-off ticket. In lieu of a good night kiss they can't have, she's opened her mouth and said the first thing that comes.

Stupid, so stupid.

His eyes dim as they settle on the lottery card. "No. It's not." Short, tight, dismissive. "What would I do with it that you wouldn't? It'd go into the fund too."

She didn't meant to say it like that. She meant - it will go back to the fund, and he should just take it. But it came out wrong, and now he's standing half in the hall with his hands hanging at his sides like he didn't just do the most beautiful thing for her mother tonight.

"What made you do it?" she blurts out.

Castle shrugs, and then his head lifts and with it is a sheepish little smile. "Sometimes - I don't know, Kate. Just play dice with the universe, right? See what happens. I had to buy at least five dollars and it was a five dollar scratch-off so it felt like - fate."

She meant - oh, she meant everything else. Why the benefit tonight, why any of it, why did he wait all summer?

"Fate," she echoes, searching for an answer to all the other questions she hasn't asked and he hasn't responded. If he waited for her phone call then, why does it feel sometimes like he isn't waiting any more? "It was fate?"

His hands splay out, a shrug of defeat. "Life's a gamble. Sometimes you win, but like the lottery, most times you lose. You just - lose. No reason for it, and you can't go back and unmake it, you can't put it right even with all the money in the world. Believe me, I've learned that the hard way."

They're losing. They just - lose. Nothing for it. Her chest aches and the Advil isn't even making a dent; all of it is a loss. Running at a loss.

"But you keep showing up, Beckett... and that means something to me. Maybe you're not asking about the benefit tonight, but it fits that too. All the victims, all the families, all the cases. You don't let any of it stop you, you don't quit. When I first met you, it's one of the things I wanted for Nikki Heat. And for myself. It's having a purpose."

She feels his hand cupping her elbow before she can process, the soft and warm strength of his fingers. She lifts her gaze and finds all that golden warmth of his deep smile.

But his eyes are conciliatory, apologetic.

"That's what makes me do it," he says gently, as if hoping she understands. "I think we both know it's not about the books any more."_  
><em>

_It's not about you anymore. "_Oh." He's found purpose.

"So don't thank me," he goes on. The apology in his eyes shifts suddenly to a warning. "I should be thanking you, Kate."

Castle leans in and brushes a kiss against her cheek, so delicate, so light. It's not good-bye at all.

It's hope.

"Because I've hit the jackpot," he murmurs. His fingers caress her jaw and then he's gone.

She's left standing there with a winning ticket.

**-x-**


End file.
